THE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. 175 considerable a part of the ancient structure will be woven into the view, and what a physical continuity, as Derwent says, there will be of the one with the other. The new dining-hall takes in the woodwork, to a great extent, of the old refectory for strangers; and the antique architectural forms (in the middle-pointed style) will be carefully reproduced. The old gateway will form a very imposing entrance to the modern college. IX. Re-union of Christendom-The Romish Clergy, and the Roman Church. To the Hon. Mr. Justice COLERIDGE. Chester Place, August 26th, 1845.-As for desire for reunion with the Church of Rome-I verily think that no one can exceed me in desire for the union of all Christendom, that all who call upon the name of the Lord, and acknowledge the moral law of the New Testament, and the necessity of obeying it, should be in communion with each other,the millions of Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists in America, as well as the Romanists of Italy and Spain. But such a union cannot be without concessions to a great extent on one side or the other, if not on both, unless the parties were to change their minds to a great extent, in which case the debate and the difficulty would be at an end; and I for one could never give up or adopt what would satisfy either body. I suppose, however, that you have a desire for a re-union with Rome, of a very different kind from any you may entertain for union with all Christians; you look upon Rome as a branch of the true Church, and the others above-named as out of the pale of the true Church. With this feeling I cannot pretend to have much. sympathy, though it may be my error and misfortune not to have it. I think that the Congregationalists belong to the Church of Christ, as well as the others. The Church of Rome I am accustomed to regard, not as the aggregate of Christians professing Romish doctrine, but as the body of the Romish clergy, together with the system of religious administration upon which they proceed. For the former, the multitude of Romish individuals, I have no feelings of dislike or disrespect whatever,-I believe that numbers of them are full of true religion and virtue, and worship God in spirit and in truth. The Romish clergy, considered in their corporate capacity, I cannot but look upon as full of worldly wisdom and worldly iniquity, and I think, as you do of the Reformation, that old Nick contemplates it—i.e., this body-with great satisfaction, the cockles of his heart leaping up with delight at the view. My Uncle Southey was abused for calling the system of the Romish Church "a monstrous structure of imposture and wickedness;"yet I think he did a good deal to substantiate the charge; he certainly had far more information on the subject than our young inamoratos of the modern Romish Church can any of them boast, and he had no sort of sympathy with Dissenters and Low Churchmen to inspire him with enmity against the opposite quarter of Christendom. Still I am endeavouring to get rid of Protestant prejudice; of all feelings and views merely founded on habit, apart from reflection and genuine spiritual perception,—and to consider quietly whether or no there be not some good even in the Romish ecclesiastical system;-and some good I do believe there is, especially for the lower orders, as I also think there is some good in the Methodist system, with which, as well as with the religious practices of the strict Evangelicals, Blanco White is always comparing the system in which he, to his misery, was brought up. But I own it seems to me that the good, whatever it may be, is inextricable from the evil, both from the nature of the thing, and also because the Romish body have never been known to make any real concession of any kind or sort-none that was not meant NEW HEAVENS AND A NEW EARTH. 177 as a mere temporary expedient, to be withdrawn on the earliest opportunity: and looking upon them, as I do, as a power of this world, aiming at political domination and not inspired, as a body, with any pure zeal for the furtherance of the truth, be it what it may, I cannot believe they ever will. X. "New Heavens and a New Earth." The following lines may fitly be inserted here, as a poetical expression of the writer's sentiments on these high subjects.-E. C. TO A FAIR FRIEND ARGUING IN SUPPORT OF THE RENOVATION, IN A LITERAL SENSE, OF THE MATERIAL SYSTEM. PHILONOUS TO HYLASIA. I. Keep, oh ! keep those eyes on me, Than aught like these poor heavens and earth. II. Talk no more of Scripture text, Tract and note of deep divine : III. Who that sees the radiant smile Dawn upon thy features bright, Spreading beams of tender light, IV. Who that round some verdant home Sat beneath its pleasant shade, N V. O ye fair and pleasant places, Where the eye delighted ranges ; O ye dear and friendly faces, Loved through all your mortal changes ; Are ye but stars, to shine through this life's night, Destined, in Heaven's great Day, to vanish from our sight? To Miss MORRIS. S. C., 1845. Eton, September 8th, 1845.-I have often spoken of you to Mr. de Vere; and yesterday I told him that the views which he was setting forth, in regard to the future world, the glorified body, and the new heavens and earth, were in spirit, and to a great degree in form, extremely similar to those I had heard you express and warmly enlarge upon. I am much more dry, alas! on these subjects; at least I am aware that my belief must appear very dry and cold to all but those who entertain it. We somehow fancy that we are to have a quintessence of all that is exalted, and glowing, and beautiful, in your new-world creed hereafter, only not in the same way. Mr. de Vere cannot bear to part with our human body altogether, nor with this beautiful earth with its glorious canopy. He wants to keep these things, but to have them unimaginably raised, and purified, and glorified! I think that they must go, but that all the loveliness, and majesty, and exquisiteness, are to be unimaginably extracted and enshrined in a new, unimaginable form, in another, and to us now, inconceivable state of existence. He said (so like you), "But I want this earth to have a fair trial, to have it show what it can be at the best, in the highest perfection of which it is capable, which never has been yet manifested." KEATS' " ENDYMION." XI. 179 Poetry of Keats its Beauties and Defects-" The Grecian Urn" and TO AUBREY DE VERE, Esq., Curragh Chase, Ireland. Eton, September, 1845.-I admire Keats extremely, but I think that he wants solidity. His path is all flowers, and leads to nothing but flowers. The end of the Endymion is no point: when we arrive there, it is looking down a land of flowers, stretching on ad infinitum, the separate parts indistinguishable. I admire all the minor poems which you have marked, three of them especially. In the "Grecian Urn" I dislike the third stanza: it drags out the substance of the preceding stanzas-which, after all, is stuff of fancy, not of the higher imagination-to weariness; and it ends with an unpleasant image, expressed in no very good English. "High sorrowful" is Keats' English, if English at all. I must say that, spite of the beautiful poetry, as far as words and images go, I've no patience with that Adonis lying asleep on a couch with his "white arm" and "faint damask mouth," like a "dew-dipped rose," with lilies above him, and Cupids all around him. If Venus was in love with such a girl-man as that, she was a greater fool than the world has ever known yet, and didn't know what a handsome man is, or what sort of a gentleman is "worthy a lady's eye," even as far as the mere outward man is concerned. I do think it rather effeminate in a young man to have even dreamed such a dream, or presented his own sex to himself in such a pretty-girl form. And where is the sense or the beauty of setting one woman opposite another, for a pair of lovers, instead of an Apollo or a Venus? This effeminacy is the weak part of Keats. Shelley has none of it. There is no greater stickler than I am for the rights of woman-not the right of speaking in Parliament and voting at elections, but of having her own sex to herself, and all the homage due to its attractions. There |